


Sunset Drive

by daddychilton



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:01:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1875762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daddychilton/pseuds/daddychilton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gordon and Joe are on their way to dinner while listening to the radio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset Drive

The radio was only a static blur in the background as Joe and Gordon drove to Five Sixty, the restaurant in the sky, in downtown Dallas, TX. They were still about twenty minutes, and it was sweltering outside at a hundred and ten degrees. Normal for August and people like Gordon who had been born and raised in the heat. Not so normal for those of Joe’s east-coast upbringing.

Joe’s blazer was gone, and the windows were rolled down. The A/C had cut out a couple days before and he hadn’t had a chance to fix it yet between building the new PC and this new “thing” he had with Gordon. They were only fucking, he told himself. Nothing else. Dinner at a nice restaurant meant nothing.

“You haven’t looked at me once since we got in the car.”

“Kinda hard to focus as it is without the A/C. Remind me why we didn’t just take your car again?”

“You mumbled something about going to a nice restaurant and not wanting the valet to see it. Something like that.”

“You shouldn’t have let me talk you into this. This was an awful idea.” Joe’s eyes remained on the road, and his voice remained steady.

Gordon chuckled, covering his mouth slightly with his hand. Some sort of southern nicety, Joe thought. There was no open-mouth laughing with Gordon.

“You’re joking, right?” Gordon asked. “You could talk yourself out of a coffin if you wanted to.”

Silence. A beat. Static.

Gordon’s hand moved toward the radio and turned the dial, landing on a station full of current hits. “Don’t You Want Me” by The Human League was on, and he couldn’t help but notice Joe’s smile.

Gordon took advantage of this, and turned the volume up as loud as it would go and began to sing at the top of his lungs.

“ _Don’t you want me BA-BAY, don’t you want me OOOOOOHHH_!” Gordon had both arms in the air, his hands balled into fists. His eyes were closed and he was smiling through the lyrics.

Joe remained stoic with that small smile on the cusp of his lips; he wouldn’t be broken so easily, even when Gordon was being as fun as he was. It was a nice relief to be away from  hectic Cardiff, with engineers and programmers running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Yeah, he thought. This was nice.

The crow’s feet around his eyes wrinkles and the dimples on his cheeks deepened. His smile was full-toothed, and he was laughing. His laughter was deep and full; Gordon thought it could feel a chasm like water, if given the chance.

The song was almost over, but Joe chimed in at the last verse, both of them howling like dogs to the moon. Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” came on next.

“I’ll help you relax tonight,” Joe said with a smirk, “provided you behave at dinner – don’t drink too much, alright? You know I don’t like to see you like that.”

“Sure, sure,” Gordon said. He’d never admit it—heck, he probably didn’t know it was happening—but he was blushing harder than he ever had before. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked out the window at I-35 as he smiled.

It was Joe’s turn to bring Gordon back from quiet stoicism. “ _Relax, don’t do it, when you wanna get to it, RELAX, WHEN YOU WANNA COME._ ” Joe half-attempted to do an air guitar, but decided against it; traffic was heavy and he really didn’t want to have a wreck because of some old song.

“I’d rather not die this close to our destination, thanks,” Gordon said. His hand was covering his mouth again, and Joe knew that he’d been laughing at his awful attempt at singing the song. They were both quiet—but content—again; they were almost to Five Sixty. The wind ruffled their hair, and the setting sun beat down on their bare forearms. Gordon would have a couple hundred new freckles by the time they actually got there, Joe thought.

“This is nice, you know,” Gordon said.

“Yeah,” Joe said, “it is.”

Joe’s hand was on the gearshift when Gordon placed his on top of it. Neither looked at their hands, but they both smiled.  

It was pretty nice. 


End file.
